A total of 14 girls aged ten to sixteen visited the Saarbrücken MPIs on April 3.
The participants of the 2025 Girls'Day in the Foyer of MPI for Software Systems. Photo: Bertram Somieski/ MPI INF
The “Girls’Day – Future Prospects for Girls” is a nationwide initiative in Germany aimed at inspiring girls to explore professions in which women are still underrepresented, particularly in fields such as IT, engineering, natural sciences, and technology. Once again this year, the Max Planck Institutes for Informatics and Software Systems in Saarbrücken supported this initiative. On April 3, 14 girls aged between ten and sixteen visited the institutes, met inspiring female researchers, gained exciting insights into current projects, and took part in hands-on workshops.
Anne-Kathrin Schmuck during the introductory talk. Photo: Philipp Zapf-Schramm/MPI INF
The Saarbrücken Max Planck Institutes have been participating in Girls’Day since 2017. “Computer science is a discipline that already has a significant impact on our lives – and will continue to do so even more in the future. That’s why it is particularly important to get more girls excited about this diverse and creative field,” says Dr. Anne-Katrin Schmuck, faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Together with PhD student Abigail Pribisova, she gave the introductory welcome talk to the participants.
Participants at the soldering Workshop. Photo: Philipp Zapf-Schramm/MPI INF
After some computer science-themed icebreaker games – including the “Towers of Hanoi,” the “Travelling Salesman Problem,” and a walk-through sorting algorithm – the girls took part in two workshops. Guided by Carina Schmitt and Christian Klein, they received an introduction to soldering and assembled their own binary clocks. In a second workshop, led by Pascal Hennen and Cristian Munteanu, they programmed an Arduino microcontroller and took apart old computers and smartphones to explore their inner workings.
Photo: Philipp Zapf-Schramm/MPI INF
“I especially enjoyed programming with the Arduino,” said 16-year-old Melek, who took part in Girls’Day for the third time this year. “After finishing school, I want to study either dentistry orbusiness informatics. So today’s Girls’Day was a great opportunity to learn more in advance,” said the tenth-grader.
Editor:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Phone: +49 681 9325 5409
Email: pzs@mpi-inf.mpg.de